


patron saint(s) of liars and fakes

by cabinfever



Series: miracle saints of an undying city [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 21:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11022096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabinfever/pseuds/cabinfever
Summary: On the cracked walls of a Los Santos school, their images have halos of light around their heads.The namesakes of Los Santos walk the streets even now.





	patron saint(s) of liars and fakes

The city was named for them.

Nobody knows if they came to the city or if it was built around their eldritch might. Either way, they hold the scales of Los Santos, keeping the balance or tipping it as they please.

They are not benevolent by nature. They are flawed in the way that the Greek gods were, quick to anger and quicker to laugh.

Some of the faithful wear their icons close to their hearts, praying to them when their hour of need comes near. In Los Santos, the peril is always close. Despite it, they stay, calling to their saints for guidance.

The Sniper, for focus.

The Bomber, for passion.

The Golden Boy, for deception.

The Pilot, for skill.

The Kingpin, for wisdom.

The Warrior, for courage.

The Vagabond, for retribution.

 

***

 

They walk the streets in mortal guises. Everyone in Los Santos knows someone who knew someone who saw them in the flesh.

The icons people hold so dear are lovingly drawn from memory and rumors. Somehow, the citizens of Los Santos have figured out how to read the signs, how to catch those much-desired glimpses of face and body through the smoke of a gunfight. Each picture, no matter the artist, faithfully replicates a star-shaped halo as a backdrop to the saint. The consistency legitimizes the images, and over time their mortal faces become known.

Each one of them has a distinguishing mark. For the Kingpin, it is the smear of dark tattoos and clean cut of his suit. In some triptychs, he is clean shaven; in others he has a mustache, or a full face of hair. The Warrior wears garishly bright colors and a hat, but somehow he always can slip into a crowd unseen. The Vagabond wears a jacket in the black and blue of a bruise and a mask like death. The Golden Boy appears in flashes of gold and denim. The Sniper is always seen with a pink rifle and purple hoodie. A well-worn leather jacket graces the shoulders of the Bomber, somehow always unharmed by the gunfire that tears through his body.

The Pilot is the hardest to spot. Most times, there is a glimpse of a woman with flinty eyes and unerring focus. Sometimes, though, they are in another guise, bearded but still just as intense. Nobody's quite sure if the Pilot is even real. However, every time a hit and run is avoided and a car miraculously swerves away from a child in the street, people swear they can catch the image of a person with curly ginger hair and a colorful shirt. Every time a heist ends with a jet screaming across the skyline and raining fire on the enemy, the people of Los Santos place their hands to their hearts in salute and silent prayer, hoping for some benediction in the sound of an exploding chopper.

The heists are stunning to behold when they come around. When the LSPD become embroiled in the latest scandal, without fail there is retribution. A massive bank robbery blows the head off of the corrupt chief, a lone shot cracks through the heart of a drug lord, or a riot destroys several buildings that had been home to a trafficking ring. There is always something bigger, something better, and the pull of recklessness and twisted justice is too much for the saints of the Fake AH Crew to resist. They don the skins of mortals and ride out to work their miracles.

Even so clothed, they are unlike anything alive. They are seen and unseen, heard and unheard, walking the fine line between one plane and the next. Bikers can only sometimes hear the joyful shout of a phantom before they end up crumpled and bloody in the road, slammed through the sky by the hint of a car. In the years since the birth of Los Santos, their chariots of fire have turned to beasts of metal and glass. The roar of their engines through the crowded Los Santos streets has become akin to gospel, and people place their hands to their hearts when they see the phantom flash of a supercar’s lights. They know who walks among them. Despite their fear, they adore their saints.

When people pray for a quick death, they call for the Sniper, the quiet one, the one who will not hesitate.

When they wish for a slow death, when they wish for revenge, they call for the Vagabond.

They call him the Vagabond, the Mad King, King of Hell to match Geoff's iron rule of heaven. Geoff makes good fortune appear. Ryan destroys it.

They say that in the witching hour when nobody is awake, the skull mask can be seen in one’s reflection in the mirror. In those half-alive hours, warehouses along the waterfront ring with piercing screams. The next morning, there is a trail of bodies leading from downtown to the docks. Some have been shot, others knifed, and others are nigh-unrecognizable. The policeman who first enters the warehouse on the docks retches when he first sees the remains of the Vagabond’s latest target.

Despite it, despite the dark menace of the mask and the cold ice of his avenging angel eyes, Ryan is still one of the saints. When he walks the streets under the meager neon lights, his footsteps heal cracks in the pavement and send earthquakes into drug dens. A small girl stumbles into his path once, falling to the ground and bursting into tears. He bends to ask her where her parents are and ends up walking her home, delicately holding her little hand between his fingers that have wrenched hearts from chests.

Now a woman of eighty, the girl still remembers the way he had smiled at her from beneath the harsh lines of his facepaint. Gentle and harmless and loving, like a father leading her through her first steps.

They all help like that, in their own ways. They aren’t saints for nothing.

They say that when a child cries for help in a dark corner of the city or in a broken home, they end up elsewhere. Somehow, some way, they always end up safe. The Kingpin has never been known to tolerate any injustice to the youth of Los Santos. There must be some drive in him which calls him to preserve those oases of innocence still in a child’s heart. Children who remember their relocation can only recall the vague sight of a man with golden glasses telling them _it'll be okay, i promise. geoff helped me too_.

Despite his name, the Bomber is not all explosions and flame. He is loud and boisterous and loves a fight, but he is also fiercely protective and brings out the passions of the city. In the gyms of Los Santos, he cracks jokes with first-timers and regulars as he spots them. In his human skin, he fights in the underground rings and takes down the ones he despises. On Valentine's Day, he dances in miraculously empty streets with a woman they call the Wild Card.

He is terrifying and endearing and all about extremes.

A woman in court trying to save herself and her kids from her husband suddenly finds that she has a smooth-talking lawyer wearing gold and glasses and sparkling rings. He talks circles around judge and jury both, and somehow her husband’s intimidating lawyer ends up tongue-tied and confused. She wins her freedom and tries to pay, but her lawyer stops her with a shit-eating grin and says _it was my pleasure_ , gently pushing the money away. He turns a corner in the courthouse and vanishes.

The Warrior is the newest; he edges into the faith of Los Santos and becomes part of the lore like he is born to it. Nobody's quite sure how he appeared or when; everyone just accepts that he became part of the city's bloodstained divinity and they add a new icon to their makeshift rosaries. He adopts the Sniper's role with the easy grace of a world leader transferring power. He is more explosive, more visceral, and when he is not on the rooftops he prefers to fight dirty on the streets, breaking up brawls and starting new ones as he pleases. Somehow, his knuckles are never bruised.

When he takes the streets for heists and miracles, he adopts an alias within an alias, and the people of Los Santos know to run when there are rumors of Rimmy Tim in the area. This guise is merciless in heists, shooting unerringly in silent bursts of death before brushing blood off his shoulders like it’s dust. When the smoke clears, he tips his hat and disappears, but not before placing a hand on the shoulder of a death-cold woman who was stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her eyes fly open and she takes a gasping breath from lungs that knit themselves back together, and she struggles back to life amid rubble and dust.

The Sniper's legacy stays in Los Santos, a remnant of an era in the ancient city. There are sects which follow him to his new location. They follow the blood trail and the miraculous works he leaves in his wake.

Los Santos remembers.

 

***

 

The streets of Los Santos are crowded today.

There’s some sort of open-air market in the wide streets of the financial district. The Maze Bank tower looms over the crowds like a sentry, unaware of the forces of nature that prowl in its shadow, mingling with the crowds like they belong there.

“I dare you.”

Jeremy squints at Gavin; in this sunlight, his gold sunglasses are frustratingly bright. “Did you already ask Michael?”

Gavin shrugs. “Might’ve.”

“I figured,” he sighs, and pulls his rifle out of thin air. The metal solidifies in his hands at will, already warm to the touch. Around them, the citizens of Los Santos take no notice, mistaking their half-visible figures for shafts of sunlight or mirages of the late summer heat. Jeremy hefts the weapon up to nestle at his shoulder and looks through the scope. The throng of people surges from one stall to the next, and Jeremy watches their movements with a practiced eye. There is a method to the crowd, a pattern in the way they form up and disband. If one person starts paying attention to something, at least five others will stop as well, curious and eager to get in on the joke. Jeremy thinks it’s hilarious.

“Well?” Gavin prompts. He’s impatient for sure. His fidgeting fingers in his own belt loops betray him despite his calm exterior and impassive face. The glasses certainly help. “Can you do it?”

Jeremy gives him a sidelong glance, looking away from the scope for a moment. “How much, and how many?”

Gavin hums as he thinks. “Million dollars, but you have to get at least five.”

“Dead, or injured?”

“Just do it and we’ll decide.”

“Hm.” Jeremy looks back through the scope and chooses his target. There’s a line forming to get to the bathrooms. Easy pickings, sure, but Gavin never said that he couldn’t take his shot on an existing line. He holds his breath, aims, and fires one shot.

He gets seven.

Four headshots and three torso wounds. The bodies drop with a lackluster set of thuds.

The screams begin almost immediately.

Jeremy lowers the rifle and laughs out loud. He hadn’t expected the gun to be that powerful. He shoulders through the crowd, parting it with the stocky breadth of his body with Gavin following along behind him. He can hear him squawking with laughter and disbelief over the frenzy of the crowd. He comes to stand over his little line of destruction, surveying the damage. The bullet passed through pretty cleanly for most of the way; looking down the line, he can trace its path. It was a fascinating experiment, really.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t Michael want to try this?” he asks incredulously. “That was fucking awesome.”

Gavin smiles placidly down at one of the bodies, toeing it with his designer boot. “He didn’t think he could pull off the shot, didn’t want to lose. But you’ve done it, Lil’ J.”

Jeremy grins back at him and throws his rifle to the ground, turning his back on Gavin. “Told you,” he calls over his shoulder, striding away through the screaming masses of people desperately trying to escape the threat that walks among them. His head rings with the frantic prayers of the common folk, and he soothes their fears with a wave of his hand, whistling cheerfully as he goes.

It’s good to be in charge.

 

***

 

The churches of Los Santos are long abandoned, and on the fractured altars people spray-paint stars of black and green. Maybe they believe that these paintings make the churches safer spaces, as if their desperate prayers for revenge and aid will be amplified by the sanctity of the crumbling walls.

The saints see these churches like beacons. Sometimes at night, they walk among the rotting pews, bringing peaceful sleep and small fortunes to the poor souls who take refuge there. One man swears that he woke up one night to see a man in a purple jacket walking down the fractured aisle, humming some phantom tune. He’d watched the man approach the altar, inspect the logo emblazoned there, and chuckle. Then he’d turned around like he was aware of his audience, and his eyes were like pits of fire.

The mortal in the church that night had woken up again blind but a million dollars richer.

The insincere can’t reap the benefits of the safe havens; the saints have set precautions against this. The last time a rival crew leader had tried to set foot in a shrine, he had been faced suddenly with the full might of the Warrior and the Bomber, the enforcers. People still say that his bones are ground permanently into the flagstone of the church steps. They whisper warnings against being false of heart when calling upon the saints. They know that the only fakes allowed in the city are the saints. The Fake AH Crew is a front, a set of human masks for the rulers of the city to wear when they walk among the humans.

Some of them wonder if those bodies had been people before the saints took up residence in their bones.

 

***

 

Jack is quieter than usual, deep in focus underneath the belly of an Adder. She curses at the vehicle half-heartedly, muffled by the steel above her. She’s chosen a more feminine body today, and she relishes the feeling of motor oil on her face when she brushes a stray curl out of the way.

Ryan sits beside the Adder, polishing a knife. He’s not wearing the mask or face paint today, but there’s some black residue around his eyes where the paint has spread and collected at the base of his eyelashes. Their silence is comfortable, with no necessity for conversation. Instead, the garage is filled with the clink of tools and the soft whisper of cloth on steel. Ryan loves these quiet respites. They give him time to concentrate and relax, and if he stretches his mind enough he can feel his connection to the entirety of Los Santos, can sense the dropping pressure of a storm out over the horizon. There’ll be lightning tonight.

Jack rolls out from under the Adder with a soft grunt of effort, sitting up to look at Ryan for a few long moments. Ryan tolerates the observation for a while, focused on a tiny spot of blood that has set in near the hilt. After scrubbing it out, he asks, “What’s on your mind?”

“Lightning tonight,” Jack replies. “It’ll make for an interesting heist.”

“Scared?” Ryan teases, grinning over at Jack.

She scoffs and twirls a wrench between deft fingers. “As if. About time we tried something exciting.”

“Don’t tell Gavin that, or he’ll do all he can to make every heist more ‘exciting’”.

Jack checks her phone and grimaces. “Time to go.” She shrugs at Ryan and says, “I need to get a helicopter. I’ll meet you guys at the bank for pickup. Stay in contact.” She’s out the door in an instant, running upstairs and calling to the rest of the crew to gear up.

Despite his ability to get ready in an instant, to bend Los Santos’s resources to his will, Ryan dresses for his heists by hand. He stretches and walks up to his room, carefully shutting the door behind himself. The normal apartment sounds of Gavin laughing and Geoff yelling at them all to get geared up get muffled by his door, but not enough that they fall silent. Ryan likes the comfort of company.

He sits at the little table in the corner of his room in front of a small mirror. Watching his reflection carefully, he painstakingly applies his face paint, taking care to keep every stroke symmetrical. The visage of the Vagabond comes into being with a creeping slowness, turning him from a semblance of a human man into the avenging angel of Los Santos.

He smiles into the mirror and delights in the way the skull contorts into a grotesque parody of humanity. _Master of death_ , they call him.

They’re right.

 

***

 

They say that it’s impossible to climb Mount Chiliad by foot.

The hiking trail is mocked and left unkempt for its simplicity. There are legends which say that the saints’ influence spreads far beyond the reaches of the city, and that they bring riches to those who reach the top of the mountain. The theorists always reference half-blurry cell phone videos which catch faint blips of light flitting around at the peak of Chiliad.

The rule is that to climb Chiliad the right way, you have to go without ropes and without gear. To reach the saints, you have to risk death.

Those who reach the top, hands bloody and clothes torn, find themselves greeted by six smiling figures. Their wounds are cleaned but left unhealed as proof of their accomplishment, bound in a silk which is near priceless in the black market for its rarity. The saints of Los Santos press a weapon into their hands and whisper _be ready, we’ll come for you_.

From that day on, the climbers find that their lives are far longer than anticipated. They still look twenty when their siblings are wizened and gray, and somehow most diseases pass them by. They’re luckier than most citizens, winning gambles and dodging bullets. Somehow, they are halfway to sainthood.

And in return, when the Fake AH Crew calls, they answer. They have earned their place with resolve and blood, and so the saints have deemed them worthy. On some heists, then, the Fake AH Crew march into smoking buildings flanked by near-human accomplices wielding guns, knives, and bloody fists.

There are some who have been canonized to the citizens of Los Santos. The red-headed Wild Card, the shaggy-haired Architect, and the tall Producer, the one who they say now plans the heists of the Fake AH Crew - all of them own this city too, in their own twisted ways.

Somehow, the city is big enough to hold their growing divinity.

 

***

 

“Geoff?”

He and Michael are standing on the roof of the penthouse. The wind whips around them,  tugging at the suit he wears and rustling Michael’s curls. He looks at Michael and asks, “Yeah?”

“Is this forever?” His voice is smaller than usual.

Geoff sighs and looks out at the city built from their bones and faith. It glimmers faintly up at him through the haze of sin that blankets the underbelly. From the roof, Los Santos almost looks beautiful, almost peaceful. He’s lost track of the years that they have spent here. He does not remember if there was a before, and he isn’t certain there will be an after. There is something in his gut holding him - holding _them_ \- to this city. As long as there is crime and corruption and the chance for dominance, he craves the heady rush of Los Santos. He stirs up gang wars when things get too quiet, creating another ten years of conflict to fuel his divine glee. He loves it, and would have it no other way. He wants to tell Michael that he would never willingly abandon Los Santos, that he would rather be the one to burn it to ash than leave it behind, and that he knows that Michael feels the same, but instead he answers -

“I don’t know, kid. I hope not.”

The words sound hollow even to him.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a fall out boy song of the (mostly) same name.
> 
> drop me a line [here](http://triplehelix.tumblr.com)!


End file.
